Sacrifice in Maya culture



Sacrifice was a religious activity in Maya culture, involving either the killing of animals, the bloodletting by members of the community or the killing of human beings, in rituals superintended by priests. Sacrifice has been a feature of almost all pre-modern societies at some stage of their development and for broadly the same reason: to propiate or fulfil a perceived obligation towards the gods.

Animal sacrifice and bloodletting were a common feature in many Maya festivals and regular rituals. Human sacrifice was far less common, being tied to events such as ill fortune, warfare and the consecration of new leaders or temples. The practice was also far less common than in the neighbouring Aztec societies.The maya people would sacrifice their prisoners. The prisoners were most often from neighboring tribes. These sacrifices made them feared and hated by all the other tribes.

Child sacrifice

Mayanists believe that, like the Aztecs, the Maya performed child sacrifice in specific circumstances, most commonly as foundation dedications for temples and other structures. Maya art from the Classic period also depicts the extraction of children's hearts during the ascension to the throne of the new kings, or at the beginnings of the Maya calendar. In one of these cases, Stele 11 in Piedras Negras, Guatemala, a sacrificed boy can be seen. Other scenes of sacrificed boys are visible on painted jars.

As archeologists continue to excavate, more instances of child dedicatory sacrifices are being uncovered. A dig commenced in 1974 at the northern Belize site of Lamanai turned up the remains of five children, ranging in age from a newborn to about 8 years old:
The conclusion that the five children were sacrificial victims is virtually inescapable ... Nowhere else at Lamanai is there evidence of human sacrifice, either of children or adults ... However, it is clear that the offering of children as part of the dedicatory activities that preceded the setting up of stelae was not uncommon at any time or place in the Maya lowlands."

In 2005 a mass grave of one- to two-year-old sacrificed children was found in the Maya region of Comalcalco. The sacrifices were apparently performed for dedicatory purposes when building temples at the Comalcalco acropolis.

An excavation at El Perú-Waka’ turned up the remains of an infant with, unusually, those of a adult male, in the presence of extensive evidence of feasting that had followed the expansion of a residence which had then been "ensouled" by the rituals, festivities and sacrifice. The analysis suggests that the "interments show that human sacrifice was not limited to the royal actors associated with the Classic Maya state, but could be practiced by lesser elites as part of their own private ceremonies."

Source: wikipedia

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This shows that each culture has its own morality, and that psychedelics don't make you "Love" everything. They can also make you do stupid things like believing you need to kill people in order to satisfy a freaking flying snake that is not even real. Taking psychedelic drugs wont always conduct you to do what's "right".

They can seriously delude you.

These people were shamans and I see a lot of violence, ignorance and fear-mongering.
I would NEVER expect that a psychedelic drugs user would be a "loving and caring" person just because he uses certain drugs.

If you find your path that is full of "light and love" good for you. But YOU made the decision, the drug didn't force you.
Psychedelics can make you believe all sort of things, please be careful and respect others' lives.

That last part pretty much sums up everything I've been tryin to say. That not all things entheogens give you are the truth and It takes you to intreprate them and filter them through your head to get results. I Love the nexus so much diversity and thought

It does help add evidence that organized religion usually ends up hurting many of it's innocent followers.

I don't think the fact that they usd mushrooms in their spiritual/religious prractices was the cause of the sacrifices. however, I don't know enough about the situation to say more than my opinion. I mean there was no cerimony to eat mushrooms and then kill kids to appease the mushroom god (there wasn't was there?)

Anyways, just my 2¢

acolon_5 does it matter?

imagine yourself sacrificing a kid on one day to dedicate your temple..

then having a mushroom ceremony in that temple the next day ?

They knew...They were deluded.

They also breathed air. They also ate fish and vegetables. If you point the finger at the mushroom in regard of their human sacrifices, you could just as well point the finger on the fact that they did breathe air and ate fish and vegetables. The mushroom, or any other elements, does not really have any impact here.

So, mushrooms wouldn't open anyones eyes to the evils of sacrifice?

Whats the point of focussing on such things practiced within a culture whos operating system is not relevant to our own? Our culture certainly doesnt support that. We dont even know what influence the mushrooms had onthe maya in the end. For all we know they could have performed less sacrifices due to the mushrooms and more sacrfices due to their intake of datura. The mayans took alot of psychoactive substances, just becasue they took mushrooms doesnt mean that they were the ONLY thing influencing them. Datura was a big one for them, mayan priests were taking large doses of deleriants.

But why focus on something that went down yesterday, and asking what if?..running of but this and but thats?..

Isnt it better to ask yourself how YOU have been effected by the mushrooms? At least that will be clear and concise..do YOU take mushrooms and suddenly feel the need for human sacrifice?

Im certainly not mayan, so what they did in their culture is hardly relevant to what I do here in mine.

One thing that needs to be said here about the reality of human sacrifice in many cultures, is that these people live by an entirely different cosmology than us, and if you dont outline that when talking about the phenomenon than the whole discussion is sort of overly simplified. These people did not view life and death in the same way that we in the west view life and death. It was compleltey diff view. Alot of mayan scarifices were actaully SELF sacrifices..which tells you something about how these people viewed death on a personal level. While it is true that they sacrficed others as well as self sacrificing, it was their cosmology that allowed for that to happen, same reason some people might choose to welcome death as simply a transition into another incarnation..while the next person might not believe in reincarnation and fight death to the bitter end. Thats the reality of it. These people might not have had the same negative feelings attached to the thing that we in the west attach to them, and the fact that among the mayans there were many rituals which involved self sacrifice is STRONG evidence of that.

There is also some debate amonth anthropologist and archeologists as to weather or not the more brutal and forced sacrifices were exectued by the mayans. Some scholars have put forth the idea that it was more the Aztec's that performed these types of sacrifices, based on a misinterpretation of the older mayan depictions that may have been more symbolic of shamanic death than literal sacrifice. That however is somethign I dont know enough to have an opinion on so I will leave it at that.

Exactly - insofar we have no evidence to suggest that widely used of entheogens in a culture makes the said culture perfect. The latter is a fallacious statement because of the definition of perfect.

We see child sacrifice as a horrible thing according to our moral standards, yet, in the mayan society it may have sounded pretty much fine. It could be also be that the sacrificed person felt very honourable by being chosen for sacrifice.

I think that this guy basically outlines the relevance of entheogens in western culture as opposed to the relevance of them in tribal societies..he makes alot of sense.

http://www.youtube.com/w...L5fw&feature=related

I'm not saying that the MUSHROOMS are 100% direct responsible for the deaths of thousands of mayan people.

I AM saying that:

1) Mayan shamans ate mushrooms.

2) Mayan shamans sacrificed people.

3) Mayans went to war and killed their enemies brutally. (Like every other culture).

So:

Taking psychedelics or mushrooms doesn't mean that you will be automatically full of "light and love".

So when someone says: "I cant believe you are an experienced LSD/DMT/4-HO-DMT/MDMA user and still an aggressive/evil/asshole person"... it surprises me.
These people assume that taking certain drugs SHOULD make certain people behave like hippies or pluravers.

I personally know more than one MAYAN NEO-SHAMAN that have taken all types of psychedelics and still thinks Quetzalcoatl will come here in 2012 and create havoc and destruction and everyone will die except them because they are "the chosen ones". It's completely absurd. They are VERY deluded and they use psychedelics very very often.


Not everything is light and love. And psychedelics won't push you inevitably to light and love.
Your education, your thoughts, your dreams and expectations, your personality and your experiences (including psychedelic drugs) can help you become a 'better' person.

Psychedelic's affect the mind, but how they affect the mind may depend on how that mind is culturally predispositioned toward certain ways of perceiving things.

The mayans had a culture preoccupied with violence and death, as far as i know. Like other ancient south-american cultures such as the aztecs. Ancient artefacts often display violent scenes and the animals they worshipped where most often predators. Maybe life in the jungle wasn't as idylic as some of us picture it to be, maybe life was pretty tough. Dangerous animals, disseases, scarcity of food and clean water and maybe rivalry between different tribes about these scarce resources...

If a brain, wired to survive in such an environment meets a psychedelic substance it may generate a different type of experience.

I'm in agreement with the basic supposition here that entheogens aren't inherently placating substances, and there are many historical cases to back that up. Apart from specific use in healing, which is absolutely not the only use, the peaceful tone of psychedelic use was perhaps merely a late 60's phenomenon, having more to do with the anti-war and flower-power movements than with the substances themselves. Psychedelics can induce delusion in those prone to such, which may lend itself violent practice, but I'd say no more than any other altered mental status (mob mentality, survival mentality, panic, or general stress and trauma, not to mention a vast array of behavioral disorders).

I'd also like to point out that the ritual violence of the Maya was perpetrated or instigated by a class of priests, rather than shamans. Priests typically represent a fairly sick breed with a great deal of undue sway over masses. Human sacrifice seems to have been more prevalent within larger, settled, agrarian civilizations than in small tribal hunter-gatherer communities where the hunt and endemic warfare serves as the primary outlet for violent tendencies (barring cannibalistic tribes, in which human sacrifice, hunting, and warfare are integrated). Offhand, I'd say human-sacrifice is probably most common among larger slave-taking civilizations in decline.

The Maya and Aztec were of North America, by the way.

Psychedelics have the influence to poison the mind or grow the heart.

It all comes down to the user.

I've eaten loads of shrooms but I've never killed anyone. But I know that some people have killed kids and adults without eating any shrooms. So I wouldn't blame the shrooms. You're more likely to kill someone after consuming alcohol.

Maybe they would have killed EVEN MORE kids if they DIDN'T eat mushrooms? Who knows?

Personally I think that psilocin has most definatily proven it's effectiveness as a spiritual healing tool..and if anyone wants to argue that all you need to do is go look at the John Hopkins studies done done on the treatment of anxiety with psilocyben on terminally ill patients.

I look around me and all I see comming from mushroom eating is happy joyful people.

Nobody here is "blaming" the mushrooms.

What I'm saying (and most people agree with) is that eating mushrooms, smoking DMT, taking MDMA or ingesting LSD doesn't automatically make you live your life or treat others like if it is full of "Light and love". Also, in some cases, they can induce delusions which can be potentially dangerous. As stevowitz said:



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The study only proves effectiveness of spiritual growth in terminally ill patients in a controlled environment, with the help of many sessions of psychotherapy.
The study doesn't prove that eating mushrooms won't make you go crazy in an uncontrolled environment and without professional help.

Now, we can see the behavior of some people using mushrooms in the Shroomery forum... and we know some of them are not full of "light and love".

Im starting to think that this entire thread is really just a responce my my report from last night..and if it is why dont you just come out and say it? Not one person is going to aruge the validity of set and setting, so Im not really sure who it is you are trying to convince?

I find that alot of the time here lately, someone posts a report about how much good psychedelics are doing in their life, and everyone else jumps in with all these other scenarios. It gets old real fast though.

Id rather hear some more people talk from first hand personal experience instead of this culture or that culture that existed yesterday. All I get from DMT, ayahuasca and mushrooms are deeper and deeper levels of understanding.

Ahh well..im over this thread. One mans medicine is another mans poison.

No fractal, I already responded to your thread and you replied back. I posted this thread to discuss what's in the thread. It's not about you.



That is awesome.

Psychedelics are a tool - and like any tool, they can be used to build up, or used to tear down and destroy. They are not good or evil in themselves; that comes entirely from the user. Hitler used Mescaline (this is documented at Erowid). Obviously, it didn't make him full of "light and love". Instead, under the influence, he was witnessed communicating with Dark Powers, and unseen Entities - and who the hell knows what else.

Good and evil are metaphysical realities, or at least aspects of human nature. Psychedelics are power tools that can put us in touch with either side; the choice is, as always, up to the individual. For someone like Hitler, Mescaline expanded his Ego and his Will to Power. For someone like, say, Moses, a hallucinogen would give visions of a God of Justice (a huge step up at the time).